PastImperfect: Edward Turner The British motor industry in the postwar period produced many designers and engineers who were to have a profound effect on the future of the automobile. Some are well known, but many, sadly have slipped into comparative obscurity. One such was Edward Turner.
Turner was born on January 23rd, 1901, and following a rather basic schooling joined the Merchant Navy as a radio operator, aged 14. By the 1920s he had left the sea, and was running a motorcycle shop in South London where he showed the first signs of what would be a distinguished career by designing and building his own "Turner Special". In 1927 he joined the Ariel Company where he was part of the team that developed the famous Ariel Square Four, and by 1932 had become Ariel's chief designer.
Even greater things were to follow, for Turner so impressed his boss Jack Sangster, that when Sangster bought Triumph Motorcycles in 1936, he put Turner in charge of running the whole operation. Within a short time, Turner turned Triumph's fortunes around and produced a number of quite exceptional machines including the famous 1937 Triumph Speed Twin. The Speed Twin engine served as the basis for the vertical-twin Triumph range which continued right through the 1970s, and also the Bonneville, Tiger 100 and Thunderbird.
The war years brought personal tragedy when Turner's wife was killed in a car accident, and of course, during the blitz, the Triumph factory was totally destroyed. Following the war Turner spent a brief time at BSA before returning to Triumph, producing the Thunderbird for the American market. In 1951 Triumph was sold to BSA and Turner was appointed managing director of the BSA Automotive Division which included Daimler, all of the motorcycle business, and later Carbodies Limited.
In 1956 he was asked to design an engine for a Daimler V8 saloon as a matter of urgency. Turner and his assistant, Jack Wickes, turned to the air-cooled vertical-twin engine of 498cc that Turner had designed for Triumph in 1937. This engine had very advanced combustion chambers and proved very efficient providing Turner and Wickes with an excellent basis for the new V8. The new engine ran for the first time midway through 1957 and proved to have few problems and produced a noteworthy, for the time, 140 bhp. The project saw the light of day as the powerplant for the new Daimler sports car, the SP250, originally named the "Dart" but quickly losing this name when Chrysler threatened legal action.
The takeover of Daimler by Jaguar in 1960 lessened Turner's influence and led to the SP250 being dropped in 1963 to make way for Jaguar's "E-Type", although Turner's V8 was to find its way into Jaguar/Daimler saloons with memorable results. Turner did not get on well with Sir William Lyons and was probably happy to undertake a mission for BSA in 1960 to tour Japan where he visited the Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha factories to assess the potential threat they posed to the British motorcycle industry. He was stunned!
Turner retired in 1964, and died in 1973.